The Chains that Bind
by attackamazon
Summary: It was a stroke of luck when Samson managed to capture the Inquisitor, but she's proving to be a more difficult prisoner to control than he had thought. Fortunately, he knows her weakness and exactly how to exploit it - and how to turn it to his own advantage at the same time. But who is really controlling who?
1. Feeding the Dragon

_Note: This is a story about terrible people doing terrible things to each other. This story contains violence, non-consent, and general heinous fuckery. If that is likely to upset you, read with care.  
_

 _I came up with this scenario while writing another piece, but I just couldn't find a place for it. Someone requested some Samson smut and I wanted to try my hand at writing a twisted and complicated protagonist for once, so here we go._

* * *

The air in the ruined temple was always stale and dry, dusty with history that had long since passed out of memory. Samson had grown used to it. The fearsome statues and carvings that decorated the mouldering structure leered, but none were more interesting to him than the face of the woman he looked down at now. The Inquisitor. Quite the prize.

It was the first time that he had gotten a good look at her and Samson paused to appreciate the view. Hair so red it looked like she'd bleed if you cut it. Pretty face with full lips. Fair skin that showed none of the wear and hardship of a commoner's life, despite the cuts and bruises of battle.

His scouts had struck gold on the day that they had spotted her bathing alone a little ways from her camp there in the Emerald Graves. Vala Trevelyan was a terror on the battlefield - a woman-shaped dreadnaught that breathed death and ate the fear of her enemies. Samson had seen it with his own eyes at Haven. Catching her vulnerable - out of her heavy plate and without her companions to back her up - had been a coup. Even then, unarmored, with only her sword in hand, Trevelyan had faced him down with a challenge. She had stood there, half-naked like some bare-breasted barbarian shieldmaiden with her eyes burning rage, and dared him to face her as an equal. Samson wasn't that stupid. But he had to give her credit for the sheer balls of the challenge.

Trevelyan hadn't gone down without a fight. There was still dried blood matted into her hair and on her face and clothes, though he had poured a potion into her to keep the breath in her body once she was down. She was still unconscious, propped against the wall of the chamber he had claimed as his personal war room and quarters. Her wrists were shackled and the chain threaded securely through a sturdy ring in the stone wall that had once been used to tether the sacrifices offered to Dumat in some by-gone age. Fitting, Samson thought to himself without humor, since she was now awaiting slaughter herself. The Elder One would surely make her death painful and long for all the trouble she'd caused him.

Still, much as it would be a mercy to let her expire there on the floor, Samson had to keep her alive in the meantime. He fingered the flask of water in his hand and moved towards the prone woman, hunkering down next to her as he grasped her jaw to tilt her head back enough that the water wouldn't choke her.

The touch seemed to provoke some instinctual reflex of self preservation. Trevelyan roused. Her jaws clamped shut, her body twisted with a startled snarl of fright. Blue eyes snapped open wide, the pupils dilating with enraged recognition as they lit on his face. She lashed out with her chained fists. Samson caught the blow easily and slammed her back against the wall hard, her head bouncing off of the stones with enough force to stun her as he grasped her by the throat.

Her fingers pried at his grip as he pressed in slowly, choking her, but as strong as she was the red lyrium had made him far stronger. He glared into her eyes until he saw her expression turn from rage to choking panic. He squeezed tighter for just a moment before relaxing his grip enough to let her draw a breath at last. The sound that burst from Trevelyan's lungs as she sucked in the stale air was painful.

"Just so we understand each other," he told her curtly, satisfied as he felt her go still except for her heaving breaths.

"Bastard," she spat, gasping. If she had been a mage, the outrage in her glare could have burned him alive. Samson grinned at her, nastily. He held up the flask of water, shaking it so she could hear the liquid inside.

"Water. Not what a noble lady is used to, I know, but it'll get the taste of blood out of your mouth. You can drink it yourself or I can pour it down your neck by force. Either way is fine by me."

For a moment, Samson thought that she would start to struggle again. Still breathing heavily, Trevelyan pressed her lips together - and what lovely lips they were, he thought to himself with a momentary spark of desire - before relaxing the taut resistance in her limbs.

"Good girl," he told her, holding the bottle up for her, waiting until she had grasped it before removing the hand from her throat. He leaned back as she uncorked it and raised it to her lips.

Trevelyan's legs were under her in an instant. Her fist caught Samson on the chin hard, but he reacted just as quickly as the second thudded against his chest. He rolled with the blow, taking the power out of it, and used her own momentum to tumble her onto the stone floor. She was groggy still, her reflexes slow, her limbs restricted by the heavy chains. It was all the leverage he needed to pin her, kneeling astride her back as his full weight crushed the air from her lungs, her arms twisted up painfully behind her as she continued to fight, legs thrashing. Blood dripped from a cut on his lip, his jaw smarted, but Samson hardly noticed it. His heart pounded with vengeful anger as he cinched the pressure on her arms tighter, feeling her shoulders and elbows strain and the joints crack, until at last her furious curses turned to a prolonged howl of pain. He snatched her hair, bowing her neck and body back cruelly as he snarled low and cold next to her ear.

"Keep that up, bitch, and you'll be screaming for death by the time the Elder One comes to deal with you."

He released her, standing back as he watched Trevelyan heave and shudder, slowly picking herself up onto her hands and knees. Her long, tangled hair curtained her face from his view, but he could feel the hate radiating off of her. Good. The leather bottle lay a few feet away. Samson wiped his bloody lips and then picked it up, felt that it was still about half full, and then set it down next to her hand again as she struggled to regain her breath.

"Drink."

He prepared himself to have to hold her down and strangle her until he could pour the water into her himself. But, at last, Samson saw Trevelyan's hand grip the bottle. She was still on her hands and knees and he watched cautiously as she settled back onto her heels and tilted her head back, draining the vessel. Satisfied, he grinned.

"See? Nothing hard about that."

The leather bottle was flung at him with a good amount of force. It bounced harmlessly off of Samson's breastplate and he kicked Trevelyan in the gut, his boot finding the soft spot between her sternum and her belly hard enough to drive the breath out of her and flip her painfully onto her back. The woman groaned, her body curling onto her side reflexively to protect her from further abuse as her stubborn anger was overcome at last. He pushed her onto her back again with the tip of his boot and stepped on her chest, leaning his weight onto her sternum between her breasts with a firm and relentless pressure. She cursed him weakly, but she no longer had the strength in her limbs to stop him. Her eyes began to glaze as they stared back up at him.

"This isn't Skyhold. You're in my place now. And, while you're here, you're mine, too," he told her, pressing down harder for emphasis and seeing her teeth grit with pain and her limbs writhe as her ribs constricted cruelly. "Throw spite at me, girl, and you'll get it back worse than you ever imagined possible. Think about that."

With that, he turned and left her there, striding out into the main sanctuary of the temple. The ghost of a smile spread onto Samson's lips as he started his rounds, checking that everything was in order. The Inquisitor's reputation was well earned. For all the trouble it would cause him, he admired her defiance. Nothing like a woman with vinegar and fight in her. It was a shame what Corypheus would do to her when he arrived. But, Samson thought as he wiped the last smears of blood from the corner of his mouth, he might enjoy this more in the meantime than he had thought.

~~0~~

By the time Samson returned to his chamber, it was dark outside. His quartermaster had lit the candles before his arrival, and the shadows flickered and shivered along the high vaulted ceiling and across the walls like the ghosts of the demons who had haunted this place before he had arrived. A simple rationed meal of hard bread and cheese and a little watered wine had been left for him. There was a clink of metal chain and a slow movement to his left - Trevelyan standing and glowering at him from where she had been sitting against the stone wall.

Out of her armor, in her arming tunic and breeches alone, she was still an imposing woman. She was tall and well-muscled from fighting. Despite being chained, she held herself with the confident grace of a swordswoman. Still, there was a shape to her that betrayed the existence of womanish curves under her clothes. Samson noted the generous swell of hips and breasts - remembering the shape of them from when he had caught her unclothed on the river bank. Trevelyan scowled fiercely at him as he paused to peruse her, making no secret of it.

"Spare me your lechery, dog," she scoffed at him.

"Just taking a look at what's going to waste once Corypheus gets his claws on you. Shame," Samson replied, casually, letting her see exactly how little her anger affected him. He sat down at the battered table that he had dragged into the chamber to serve as a work space and grinned at her. "You're not the first pretty noblewoman to call me 'dog'. Makes me homesick for Kirkwall."

"No doubt you were just as much a repulsive coward there as you are here," Trevelyan goaded him, aggressively. Trying to provoke him into a fight, Samson knew. He laughed at her.

"I'll tell you one thing, girl. I'd rather be a dog than a noble. A dog is loyal. A dog will never turn on you, unless you mistreat it. A nobleman will smile in his best friend's face and stab him in the back and never think twice about it."

"I retract the accusation, then," Trevelyan retorted, icily. Her expression was cold now, disdainful. "As being unfair to dogs. Even a dog has the courage to face an enemy tooth to tooth. You are less even than that."

Samson's smile diminished slightly as he felt a spike of hot anger deep in his gut, but he knew she wanted him to lash out at her. He tore off a piece of bread from the wooden plate before him idly instead.

"There's the bluster I expect from your kind. Insult me all you want, but you're the one who's going to end her life chained to a wall, not me. How did that work out for you?" He chewed the hard bread for a moment and then broke off a larger part of the dry loaf, holding it up. "Hungry?"

"I would rather starve than break bread with you."

He tossed the crust onto the floor in front of Trevelyan anyway. She regarded it as if it were crawling with maggots before turning her stony contempt back up to him. Magnificently poised, this girl, whatever else she was. As he bit into the remaining part of the loaf with a crunch, Samson assessed her. While he liked her spirit, she did have a mouth on her. Listening to her spit bile at him would get tiresome after a while. And he knew one way to humble her that he very much liked the thought of.

He finished his meal and stood. Trevelyan had taken to pacing slowly along the short space that the chain allowed her like a caged lioness. She paused as he approached her, watching him suspiciously.

"Maybe you can settle a question for me," he told her, amiably, keeping his tone lazy and his posture neutral. "When I was in Kirkwall, I always heard that the noble girls up in Hightown had the tightest cunts. To hear it told, they all tasted like honey and rosewater. Never had the chance to fuck one myself, though. What about you, Inquisitor? Does it ring true?"

She scowled at him, but Samson could see her back away a fraction, her body tensing. He grinned at her discomfort, taking another step towards her.

"No need to be shy. You might be a fighter - a damned good one, I'll admit - but you're still a woman behind that title and underneath all that armor and pomp. The hardest on the outside are always the softest inside when you have them spread and moaning underneath you. We could find out."

"Touch me and you'll die," she snarled at him, but Samson saw her back up another step towards the wall.

"Tough words, but that's a fight you'll lose, girl, and we both know it."

The ploy had worked. Trevelyan retreated from him, backing down to a more defensive stance. It wasn't fear, exactly, that Samson saw in her eyes - but she wasn't flinging curses or barbs at him anymore either. In truth, he wouldn't have pressed it much further. Though he was confident that he could overpower her, take her there against the wall and leave her bloody and fucked on the floor, it would be more trouble than it was worth. His point was made. Still, he thought as he cast another appraising look over her body, he might change his mind before this was over.

"Another night, maybe," he told her, turning his back on her. "I've work to do."

He returned to his desk and finished off the wine gradually in the light of the candles as he read through his reports. Trevelyan had settled down against the wall, watching him. He didn't look at her. So long as she was behaving herself, he could let her stew. Finally, he sat back from his work and sighed, stretching. There was a slight ache in his temples, a tightness in his chest that told him his next dose of lyrium was due. Time to do something about that.

He felt his prisoner's eyes watching him as he crossed to the chest that contained his supply and his philter and unlocked it, carrying the paraphernalia of his addiction back to his seat. The ritual of preparing the lyrium and consuming the philter was one he normally preferred to carry out in private. Tonight, however, Samson wanted Trevelyan to see it. She knew what the red lyrium did. She had seen his templars. He wanted to look her in the eye as he drank the bitter red, showing her how little of a threat she was to him in comparison to what he was willing to do to himself.

The rush was sweeter for it, as he settled back against his chair with a sigh. Red light suffused his body, calming him, lifting him up. The ache in his head drifted away, and he savored the sense of peace. When he opened his eyes again, Trevelyan was staring at him. There was an oddness in her expression - something that was between disgust and fascination. Too focused. Strange, that.

"There's nothing like it," he told her with a smile, rising from his chair and feeling the weight of the day drift off of him along with his anger.

He removed his armor, unlaced his boots. He was aware that Trevelyan's eyes scanned him briefly as he stripped away his arming coat and stood bare chested before her. She looked away quickly when he glanced in her direction and so he turned, as if showing off his scarred torso for her benefit.

"Look all you want. It's only fair. I've already had an eyeful of what's underneath your tunic."

Her gaze remained averted as he pissed into the chamberpot and then went to snuff the candles.

"It'll be a cold hard night on those stones. I'd invite you to my bed, but something tells me you'd be chilly company yourself."

Trevelyan offered no reply, though he could see her jaw working, biting off a scathing retort. Her eyes glittered with barely restrained violence in the dim light of the last remaining candle and Samson returned her glare with an equally malicious grin.

"Sleep well, Inquisitor."

He left her there in the dark and retired to his cot, stretching out and letting the residual glory of the lyrium settle him. If Trevelyan ever did get free, Samson knew that he was stoking the fire for his own murder. There was something dark buried just underneath those blue eyes and all that holy, righteous propaganda. At first, he had only wanted her docile enough to wait out the fortnight before the Elder One would arrive. Now, however, he was curious. And the thought of how far he could push her - the idea of seeing all that famous ferocity crumble at his feet - was more than a little appealing.

There had been something there when she had watched him take the lyrium. Samson was certain of it. It wasn't just revulsion. Tomorrow, he would push it further - and he would see what demons scattered when he finally broke through into what was inside that pretty head.

~~0~~

Trevelyan was kneeling, her hands propped on her thighs, her eyes closed as if in meditation when Samson approached her the following day. His prisoner was fairing none too well. She had managed to comb the worst of the knots from her hair with her fingers, but it hung down her back in spiralling, dirty locks. Her face flowered with the bruises he had given her. The skin around them was pale - not the creamy whiteness so beloved in well-bred maidens, but sickly pale. There was sweat on her brow despite the temperate air.

He sat a bottle down in front of her. Her eyes opened, glaring, but she did not move a single muscle otherwise.

"Drink."

He half-expected to have to thrash her again, but was pleasantly surprised to see her reach for the bottle without comment. Thirst was the best tamer of beasts. There was a slight tremor in her hand and arm that caught his attention. It was not fear, he thought, assessing her, but there was something deeply familiar about the involuntary shiver at the same time. Samson watched as Trevelyan drained the bottle and sat it back down on the floor. He rewarded her with a smile. Her expression remained serrated, her gaze never leaving his own. Though he could feel the hostility emanating from her like a palpable presence in the room, something was different today. Like a wrong note in a bar of music.

"Giving up the fight already?" he teased her. It was his turn to goad her now. Trevelyan's lip curled contemptuously, but she was otherwise still. Watching him. Waiting.

Her silence was no doubt another ploy to get a reaction from him. Samson wouldn't play that game. He took the bottle and set it aside. He picked up from his desk the wooden bowl and the rag he had brought with him and returned to stand in front of her, setting it down. There was a finger or two of water in the small basin, and she glanced at it - calculating - before turning her gaze back up to him. Her thirst had evidently increased considerably over the course of the night.

"Clean yourself," Samson told her. "It'll be some days yet before the Elder One comes for you and you look and smell like you were dragged in fresh from a battlefield."

Without waiting for a response, he turned back to his desk and sat down to begin his own work, though he watched her from the corner of his eye. For several long moments, Trevelyan was still. Then he saw her reach for the rag.

"Must be hard for you," he commented as she washed her face and her limbs, reached under her tunic to wash breasts and torso, and squeezed water tinged rusty brown from old blood back into the bowl, "being used to finer things."

He hadn't really expected her to answer. Trevelyan's voice was cold and calm when she did. She did not pause in her toilette.

"You know nothing of me. Do not flatter yourself by imagining that you do."

Even her accent was poised - not the flowery flourish of a girl that spent her time flitting between parlors and ballrooms, but the erudite and precise diction of a woman who understood power and how to use it as both a shield and a sword. Samson raised an eyebrow, showing her amusement rather than anger.

"I know that all this Herald nonsense is rubbish. And I know that you know it, too. How long were you planning to fool them?"

"How long were you planning to conceal the truth from your men?"

The raven quill bent, nearly snapping, in Samson's grip, but he caught himself. Trevelyan's smile was venomous when he glanced at her. She knew she had drawn blood. He finished his message and rolled up the strip of parchment.

"I know that you're not as pure and holy as you act. No one kills like you do without enjoying it."

"Do you not enjoy seeing your enemies die?"

There was an actual question in her voice, a note of interest alongside the contempt. Samson stood, regarding his prisoner. The dirt, grime, and dried blood were gone from her face and arms. Her hair was wet where she had tried to scrub the gore from it. Her smile lingered - malignant and lovely at the same time - as she took his measure in return. He wanted to wipe that smile from her face, watch it turn to a rictus of rage or pain beneath his hands. It was time to put the theory that he had been building to the test.

He crossed the room to his chest and retrieved his philter. Trevelyan watched as he returned, setting his kit down in full view of her.

"I do, at that," Samson answered her evenly as he pulled the vial of pure lyrium - shimmering blue-white within the glass - from his belt pouch and saw her go still.

He went through the preparations slowly. By the time he was done, Trevelyan's smile had vanished, replaced by a fixed, hungry expression. Samson rose, holding the philter casually as he approached her. He smiled as he saw her eyes follow it.

"I know that you want this even more than you want to kill me."

The chamber was silent. Samson could hear the wind whistling through the spires of the temple as Trevelyan's face darkened. The hatred in her eyes when she tore them away from the philter to look up into his face was so bitter that it felt like something no longer even human. Her fists were clenched at her sides. Samson could see her nails digging into her own flesh.

"You were never a templar. How did it happen?" he prompted her, curious. If he was foolish enough to walk within arms length of her, there was no question in his mind that she would attack him. Her jaw clenched for a moment, before she spoke.

"I trained outside of the Order. The skill and the lyrium without the vows."

"Maker's balls, girl," Samson scowled at her, appalled. "I know templars that would give their sword arm to be free of the stuff. At least the Order has the decency to teach you how to bear it. Why would you do that to yourself?"

His remonstrance brought the claws out at last. Trevelyan was at the end of her chains in flash, snarling at him. Her fist swiped a hair's breath away from his face as he ducked quickly out of her reach.

"You have no right to criticize my choices. I had demons to fight. I was waging a war against Grey Wardens that were summoning the blasted things by the regiment. I took the risks only upon myself. You poisoned every soldier under your command and dragged them down with you. Do not dare to ask me why."

Her face was flushed with rage as she strained against her bonds, her teeth bared like a fighting animal. Her words stung like arrows slamming into Samson's chest, but they were just that - words. Samson rolled the philter in his palm, watching as the heat of her anger slowly cooled and hardened again. It was true that women were lovelier when they were angry, he thought to himself. He considered.

A fortnight without lyrium wouldn't kill Trevelyan, but Samson knew all too well how it would make her wish she was dead. He knew first hand how it would gnaw away at her inside and how that feeling would be magnified by the fact that she also wasn't eating and barely drinking or sleeping. He knew how that could warp and crack the foundation of even the most dedicated Templars, much less someone who was only half trained. There would be vengeance in watching the noble-born bitch that had dogged his every move for the last few months brought down low by the all-consuming hunger - just as he had been on the streets of Kirkwall for so many, many years.

But there was even richer vengeance to be had by feeding it.

"You're in a fix then, sweetling," he told her, teasingly. "How many days has it been for you now? Three? Four? You're only getting your first taste of what's coming. That void inside you is just going to get worse hour by hour, day by day, until you'd gladly take even the red to fill it."

He held up the philter, looking past its glow into Trevelyan's livid gaze, and he grinned at her brutally.

"I might be willing to take that from you for a little while - at a price. I always did want to find out if the rumors about noble girls were true."

No lyrium rush had ever been sweeter than the look of impotent fury on Trevelyan's face in that moment. Samson chuckled as he saw her struggle with herself, her throat closing to choke off the roar of abuse that was surely threatening to burst from her like dragon-fire.

"Never," she ground out, barely achieving a whisper.

He shrugged, turning and walking away from her, hearing her chains rattle and clang in frustration behind him. He set the glowing philter down on the table within full view of her and smirked.

"Think on it."

Samson left her there staring at the vial that was out of her reach, and more than one of his Red Templars noticed that their commander seemed to be in especially good humor that afternoon.

~~0~~

Two days came and went. Trevelyan was visibly weakening. She still refused food, though her stomach growled so savagely that it sounded as if her body was trying to devour itself. Her thirst was too great for her to ignore, but the water that she drank seemed to do her little good. Her hands quaked. Samson heard her voice in the darkness at night as the nightmares that withdrawal always spawned assaulted her - snatches of orders growled out with fear - a name, one that Samson recognized, sighed out with weary sadness.

On the third day, when Samson sat Trevelyan's evening water ration down in front of her, he paused to take in the damage. She sat with her back against the wall, her head leaned against the stones and her eyes closed. Her cheeks seemed hollowed slightly, still pale. The bruises on her face were beginning to yellow and fade. Her expression was not peaceful, but neither was it angry. She looked, if anything, exhausted - a woman of flesh and blood and no longer the all-powerful Inquisitor.

Her blue eyes opened as she heard him approach, however, and they snapped onto Samson with no less disdain than ever. He watched her drink - moving slowly onto her knees to reach the bottle instead of standing now - and then moved over to his desk, beginning to prepare his philter for the evening. Her eyes followed him, balefully.

It had become a game, of sorts. He had left the vial of pure lyrium on the corner of the table for her to see as both temptation and torture. She would watch him as he consumed his own philter twice daily. He would grin at her and repeat his offer. Then, she would insult him or she would turn away silently. Tonight, however, he could see her face tense with frustration, her brow beaded with sweat, her mouth opening a fraction with her own need as he drank the red and let its power sweep through him.

"I'd ask if you'd changed your mind, but I know you're bent on being bloody right up until the end," he told her, his voice languid so soon after imbibing.

Trevelyan said nothing. She exhaled, a breath that she had been holding. Her head bowed, her eyes squeezed shut - Samson could see her forcing herself to inhale again slowly.

"What is it that you want," she asked, her voice precise as if she were forcing the words out against her will, "exactly?"

The silence that followed would have stopped an arrow in mid flight. Samson was quick enough to catch and carefully arrange his expression before it could show his surprise. He could see that Trevelyan was serious, however. This was not a ruse - or at least it was a very well acted one. He turned in his chair to face her, leaning forward on his knees, studying her face. She did not open her eyes. She waited for his reply as a criminal awaited the creak and plunge of the gallows trap door.

"You know what I want, girl," he told her, roughly. He would not soften the blow for her. He wanted to see her understand and choose it - he wanted to see her break.

For an instant, he was certain that she would balk, that he would see the fight flash back up in her eyes and she would curse him, retreating. But Trevelyan's shoulders rose and fell. Her lips curled into an expression of revulsion that Samson could tell was directed mostly inward at herself. And she nodded.

"Very well."

"Don't think you can trick me. I'm not foolish enough to keep the key to your bonds anywhere near me. If you fight, you'll lose your only chance for relief and I'll fuck you all the same."

"And if you do not keep your word," she shot back, her voice hardening into a blood-chilling oath, "there is no chain in this world that will prevent me from ripping your heart out of your chest with my bare hands."

Samson smiled, grimly. "I'd expect no less."

Trevelyan pulled herself to her feet as he stood and approached her. She did not look at him, closing her eyes to shut him out as he came near. Her face became a wall, her body a fortress. That, Samson thought, would not do. When he was close enough, he reached out to run his long fingers along the elegant arch of her cheek. When she flinched away he grasped her jaw firmly - not enough to hurt her, just to hold her still. He could practically feel the pulse in her neck pounding fury at him. Her teeth clenched beneath her shapely lips. He let his thumb trace a gentle circle on her cheek as he slid his other hand along the firm line of her waist.

"It's not an execution, Inquisitor. Not yet anyway," he teased her, warming to the exercise. He gathered the hem of her stained tunic, sliding his hand across the bare flesh of her belly, feeling the muscles contract beneath her skin. "I know a thing or two about pleasing a woman. Relax."

Trevelyan did not relax. If anything, he felt her tense further. Samson eased her tunic up a few more inches, traversing the plain of her stomach up to her ribs. Her body was scarred, just as his was. He followed the line of a broad, livid slash up to her chest. The rise of her breast grazed his fingers. A few heartbeats passed, his hand splayed on her sternum, before he slid his palm over to cover the firm mound, squeezing, testing it for weight and balance. Trevelyan's breath caught soundlessly. Samson grinned at her.

"It's been awhile since a man has touched you like this, hasn't it?" he asked her, caressing her jaw and throat.

She did not respond, but she didn't have to for him to see the truth of it. Her brow creased, her chest rose unevenly as she breathed.

She was struggling to contain herself - to suppress the urge to beat him to a bloody pulp for daring this. Samson didn't want her contained. He didn't want her silent and cold acquiescence. Her body alone would be a treat, but it would so much better, a proper victory, if he could break through that self-restraint and take her wholly - mind as well as body. He wanted her struggling, angry, and present - her attention focused on him and what he was doing to her. And, remembering the name he had heard her speak in the night, Samson had a good idea of what would do it.

"I knew that commander of yours didn't have the balls for it."

Her eyes flashed open, aflame once more, but Samson was expecting it. Before she could lash out at him, he yanked her tunic up, tangling her arms and obscuring her vision, as he threw his weight against her hard. He pinned her against the wall quickly as she roared in indignation and surprise. She kicked, but he was too close for her to land a damaging blow. The cloth of the arming tunic strained as she thrashed, but it was heavy and quilted to withstand the rigors of heavy armor and it held. Samson laughed in exultation as he twisted the fabric tighter to trap her arms up above her shoulders.

Her face was obscured. She was bare from the waist up. He took a moment to lean against her, pressing his body fully against hers as she writhed. The feel of her there underneath him, fighting, hating him, was more arousing all on its own than any Darktown whore he had ever fucked. His cod nudged against the front of Trevelyan's breeches, the scalding appetite beneath it beginning to wake. There would be a corresponding heat there between her legs, he thought hungrily. But that could wait a little longer.

"That's it, girl," he crooned at her, huskily, his tone belaying the violence of the moment as his free hand explored her, reinforcing his control. "That's what I like. I've got your attention now."

She cursed him and Samson grinned as he pressed his mouth to her right breast, inhaling the scent of her skin. She smelled of woman and sweat and the faint, lightning-strike, lingering scent of lyrium. His erection surged to life with a vengeance and Samson groaned, pressing himself harder against her, crushing her against the stone wall. He pulled the cloth that kept her bound up enough to kiss her neck, sucking hard at the flesh above her raging pulse as the stubble of his cheek scraped against her skin. He devoured the smell as she gasped and swore at him. More gasping than swearing now, he realized, growling triumphantly against her flushed skin.

Samson leaned back and freed her head from the neck of the tunic in a smooth movement. There was murder in Trevelyan's ice-colored eyes, but the flush had spread from her breasts up her neck and into her face. Her lips, covering teeth that would have gladly torn his flesh, were as red now as his lyrium.

"Why isn't he fucking you, Inquisitor?" Samson asked her throatily, resuming the taunt as he began to unlace her breeches with his free hand. "A woman like you - most men would kill for the chance."

He slipped his hand through the loosened laces and felt the softer fabric of her smallclothes. There was a dampness there at his fingers. He felt the rise of her mound beneath the cloth, stroking it. Trevelyan squirmed, but he could tell her body was betraying her. Her nipples stood out as hard as rubies against her white flesh. Samson leaned in and took one in his mouth, teasing her with his tongue, hearing the sharp intake of breath as he slid his fingers further under her small clothes to the soft friction of hair spiraling down into the ravine of her sex.

"My gain, though," he murmured as he traced her wetness, hearing her heart thunder against her ribs. Her limbs were taut, but Trevelyan had grown otherwise very still. He palmed her, spreading her legs a little further, grasping her possessively and pushing the heel of his hand against the sensitive place at the top of her slit as he felt her begin to shiver. "If he's not man enough, then I'm happy to oblige."

Her eyes closed, she sucked in a breath. Her body went rigid. He rocked his hand against her slowly, seeing the way that she tried to prevent her hips from moving with him, denying her body the response it wanted to give. Samson moved to her other breast, taking the nipple between his teeth and biting gently. A growling groan erupted from her throat, and he pushed her arms firmer against the wall as she struggled briefly. Her cunt burned hot against his palm. As she writhed, he parted the now slick folds of that heat and pressed his thumb against the hardening button beneath it, sliding a finger deep into her core.

"Sweet Andraste, you're tight," he grunted, feeling Trevelyan's flesh quiver and clench. She bared her teeth, but her chin tilted up, the column of her throat long and pink before him. Samson kissed the "v" where her collarbones met, trailing his lips up to her jaw, dragging another groan from her as he began to gently stroke inside of her, applying pressure to the soft, ridged place on the upper side of her core as he pressed down against the sensitive nerve bundle on the outside.

The sound that burst from the woman underneath him at last was almost feral in its urgency. Samson laughed as he kissed her neck harder, sucking, biting her under the jaw, feeling her fists clench and her shoulders buck. The blood was surging hot through his own veins now. He could hear it thrumming through his ears. His cock strained against its confines, demanding freedom, but it was not time for that yet. He slipped a second finger into her, driving them deep into her folds as he felt her hips press down, rocking instinctively to take him deeper, to rub the cloven place more firmly against his thumb as greater shards of pleasure shot up through her spine.

He kept her there, her breath panting and her body twisting for a different kind of release now, until with a final growl he let go of her arms, grasped her jaw and neck, and stroked her harder and faster until he saw her mouth open and her body seize. The muscles inside of her clamped and shuddered on his fingers as she crashed into ecstasy with a strangled wail that mingled with Samson's own crow of victory.

He kissed her, covering her mouth with his own as he pressed her hard against the wall, feeling only feeble resistance as his tongue met hers. He grasped her hair, holding her head where he wanted it as he hovered at her cheek, feeling her breath against his neck, waiting for her to come back to herself. When her eyes opened, finding his, he grinned.

Carefully, he stepped back, allowing her to finally disentangle herself. Trevelyan's face was flushed, sweaty. He could still see the edge of rage in her eyes, but dull now, uncertain. She readjusted her tunic, watching him warily as she caught her breath. Samson smiled at her. He smelled his fingers, enjoying the coppery female scent that made the back of his brain heat and sizzle, and he tasted her, sucking the nectar of lust from his fingertips.

"They were right," he teased her. "Sweet honey and the tightest cunt I've ever had. Rutherford doesn't know what he's missing."

Before she could respond he returned to his desk, retrieving the vial of pure lyrium. For an instant, he toyed with the idea of denying her. But seeing her there, the belligerence gone from her face and her body, her expression clawed through with an all too familiar need, Samson decided against it. He held the vial out to her.

"I keep my word. Take it."

Distrustfully, Trevelyan approached him. Her hand grazed his palm as she accepted the vial from him, and he saw the relief in her face as her fingers closed around it. He considered making a joke at her expense, telling her that he always paid his whores, but even as he thought it he realized that there would be no pleasure in it. He had already won. She knew it. He could afford to be merciful in conquest.

"That'll keep the horrors off of you for tonight," he told her, his rough voice sounding surprisingly gentle to his own ears. "Make the most of it. Sleep."

He left her to take the philter privately, retreating to his cot and preparing to sleep himself. He remembered the taste of her skin, the warmth of her body against him, and conjured that into the darkness. He reached down, grasping his cock as he imagined the pressure he had felt inside of her sliding onto him, Trevelyan's legs wrapping around his waist as he dragged those noises of pleasure from her again and again.

There would be time for that before the Elder One arrived. And Samson would savour every damned moment of it.


	2. Red in Tooth and Claw

Trevelyan was still asleep when Samson approached her the following morning. The Inquisitor's back was to the wall, her arms crossed at her chest so that she could raise them quickly to defend herself in an emergency. Whatever she had been before the Breach, she was a soldier now and used to sleeping in a defensive position. Her face, though, was peaceful - the first time that Samson had ever seen it that way. Her brow was smooth, the muscles of her cheeks and jaw relaxed. The lyrium had evidently soothed her suffering enough to allow her to rest. Awake, Trevelyan was a holy terror, a dragon of a woman. Asleep, there was a vulnerability to her face - the ghost of a woman that might have been if she had lived a softer life - that made something in Samson's gut stir.

He regarded the steady rise and fall of her chest for a moment longer and then nudged her booted foot, roughly. The vulnerable quality disappeared instantly as Trevelyan startled, snapping awake and preparing to defend herself against whoever was looming over her. Her wide eyes focused on Samson's face, recognized him, and her features immediately fell into place once again, resuming the cold and indifferent visage of the Inquisitor. Orlesians, with their ridiculous masks, had nothing on this woman.

"You're losing your touch," he teased her. "An assassin would have slit your throat easily before you woke."

"Then I'm fortunate that I'm only beset by a tedious brute and not someone as skilled as an assassin."

There was acid in her tone. The insult might have raised his ire if it had been delivered a day earlier, but the events of the previous night were still fresh on his mind. Samson grinned at her wolfishly.

"Tedious? I remember this brute tickling your fancy more than a little last night."

The look she shot him could have shattered an iron shield, but Samson was made of sterner stuff than that. Still grinning, he tossed a leather bottle and a half-loaf of dry bread into her lap. Trevelyan caught them, her glare shifting to suspicion.

"You're eating today," he told her, more seriously. "I admire your dedication to robbing Corypheus of the chance to kill you, but I've got a job to do and you'll not starve yourself to death before he gets here. Won't work anyway."

"And if I refuse?" Trevelyan challenged, though her tone was more clinical now than abrasive. He wasn't fool enough to misunderstand what she was doing. She was probing him, testing how much had changed since the previous night. Samson scoffed.

"Then I'll cram it down your neck as if you were a fat goose bound for a Wintersend feast." He shook his head, annoyed. "Look at it this way, Inquisitor. You want to escape? You want me dead? You don't stand a chance against me if you're fainting from hunger. You don't stand a chance anyway, but that's beside the point. All you'll do is die hungry - and it'll make the lyrium shakes worse. Feed the dragon in your belly, then worry about the wolf at your door."

She studied him shrewdly, but Samson could see the wheels and cogs of her mind turning over the words, considering. Finally, Trevelyan raised the bread to her lips and took a small bite, chewing it as she glared at him, before laying it back down in her lap. Samson accepted the small victory, grunting his approval, as he walked away. By the time he returned that evening, however, he smirked to see that the bread was gone. Trevelyan was no fool either. She knew sense when she heard it, even if it came from an enemy.

The combination of food, sleep, and lyrium had done her good. Her expression was more alert as she watched him work - writing out his orders, perching over his maps to consider how best to counter her own forces. She was a commander, too. This was as familiar to her as her own skin. He knew that there was nothing she could glean from him. His work table was well out of her reach and he had forbidden everyone but his quartermaster, especially Maddox, from entering the chamber while she was prisoner there. But he enjoyed the idea of her seeing him this way in and of itself. He had been less than nothing on the streets of Kirkwall. He had been only a little more than that as a Templar. Now, he was in command, a general - a power to be acknowledged if not respected.

She would not make that attention comfortable for him, though.

"Indulge my curiosity," Trevelyan began, conversationally, as he worked. "Do you truly imagine that a world under the heel of a corrupt and insane darkspawn magister will be better than the one we currently inhabit?"

There was note of polite disinterest in her tone despite the question, but it was only a facade. Samson imagined that this was the voice with which she addressed all of those simpering noble fops that came to gawk at her like some exotic beast in a menagerie. There were fangs and claws under that voice, a lioness waiting to see if her prey was worth toying with first before delivering the fatal bite.

"Does it matter?" he replied evenly without looking up, unwilling to be baited. "This world is fucked either way."

"So, then, you've merely chosen the path that would bring the most glory to yourself like so many unoriginal wretches before you. Allow me a moment to contain my surprise."

There was a warmth to the sarcasm that dripped from her response, however. She meant it, of course, but this was a retort meant to engage, not to wound. This was a game. Samson would play along, for now.

"Are you so much better? You haven't done everything possible to secure your own power?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Trevelyan smile.

"Of course I have. Only a fool would fail to do so in my position. The difference is that there is a future ahead of the power I've built for myself. We both know where yours ends. I was curious whether you saw this as some grand cause that would grant the loss of your otherwise regrettable life a sense of meaning and importance, or if this was merely a lack of strategic planning on your part."

The barb struck home with a vengeance. Samson's jaw tightened furiously as he struggled to keep his attention on the papers before him instead of striding across the room and slapping the cruel smugness off of the bitch's face. He drew in a breath, pausing, before he responded.

"There's no future ahead of you or your Inquisition," he told her, hearing the ice in his voice. "In a little over a week, you'll be dead. Your advisors couldn't save so much as a single backwater village without you wiping their arses for them. They're already foundering without you. A month, maybe two, and I'll walk through the ruined gates of your castle and sit on that throne I keep hearing about myself. I'll be sure to tell Rutherford how you moaned for me before I kill him."

Samson turned to glower at her. Trevelyan's smile was gone, replaced by a malevolent flash in her eyes that signified the end of the game. He grinned, a savage gesture this time rather than mirth - a wolf showing its fangs.

"Indulge my curiosity now, Inquisitor. How does it feel to know that I'm the last man who will ever bed you, while your esteemed Knight-Commander never had the courage to even try?"

He had thought that the question would enrage her. He watched her intently, waiting to see the dragon he had now become familiar with emerge from underneath her carapace of control. He was surprised when the only thing that surfaced in her face was pain. She looked away and silence stretched out between them

The hour was late when Samson finally set aside his reports and letters. Trevelyan's gaze did not follow him as he rose and went to his chest, ready to prepare his dose of lyrium for the night. He had a limited stock of the pure substance kept stashed away for use by Maddox or in case of need, but there was enough of it to dose Trevelyan as well until Corypheus arrived, if she wished. He brought forth a vial of the blue and held it up, regarding her.

"The bargain stands. Do you want it?"

He saw her flinch where she sat, her elbows propped upon her knees, silent. Her eyes closed at the sound of his voice.

"You've come this far," he reminded her. "And you're dead in a few days anyway. It isn't as if you have anything left to lose."

She remained still, as if she had not heard him. Finally, she sighed.

"Yes." Trevelyan's voice was dull - weary, but not in a physical way.

When he approached her, she stood, but she would not look him in the face. He had wanted to break her, Samson remembered as he reached out to run a strand of her blood-colored hair through his fingers. She was not broken; not yet. But he could see a crack beginning to widen.

"You wouldn't have been happy with him anyway," he told her, resuming from the thread of their previous conversation in order to keep her attention. She glanced up darkly at him, annoyed, but said nothing. Samson ran his hand down the pillar of her neck, fingering the rosette of a bruise that he had left there with his lips the night before. "Rutherford wouldn't know what to do with a woman like you. You'd have tired of him in the end. Broken his heart."

"I suppose that you are suffering from the delusion that you know what to do with a 'woman like me'," she replied, testily. "Maker above us, spare me at least the pitiful conceits of your ego."

Samson allowed himself a smile. He let his hand slide along her jaw, wrapping under her chin to force the intense azure of her gaze up to his.

"There's only one way to find out."

He would see her naked. He wanted another look at the figure that he had fought on the riverbank - all scars and sinewy grace. Trevelyan complied, grudgingly, slipping out of her breeches and small clothes and laying them aside. Her arming tunic could not be fully removed, given her chains, but she slipped the neck and hem over her head, shifting to allow it to bunch behind her neck and shoulders and baring her chest. Samson surveyed her like a statue, assessing long, powerful legs and the perfection of muscular thighs that curved into broad hips and firm waist. He noted the whorl of fine red hair between her legs, a triangle of flame, and felt his stiffening response as he remembered the heat of her on his fingers and the way her body had taken him in despite her protest. He followed the line of her ribs to her breasts - not large, but round and full.

Samson could see the pale pinkness of an arousal that she could not control or hide beginning to spread across her chest. Trevelyan did not try to shut him out tonight, but neither did she show him even a hint of the vulnerability he had seen in her sleeping face that morning. She watched him watching her, and something about that made the hairs along Samson's neck rise and tingle.

He touched a wide, jagged series of claw marks on her hip, feeling the ridges of the uneven scars.

"Terror demon?" he asked, recognizing the pattern of the injury and Trevelyan nodded. His hand traced to a short thin scar above her navel, older and silvered. "And this?"

"A sparring match that became rather heated during the early days of my training."

He chuckled. "Did you win?"

A faint smirk, less for his benefit than from the memory of the event.

"Of course."

Samson ran his hand up a long, angry seam on her side and chest - the same that he had noticed the night before. It was a fresh scar. The flesh had only recently been healed.

"Yours," Trevelyan explained, without him asking.

The fight to take her had been so quick and bloody that Samson did not remember delivering the blow, but he could indeed see the hallmarks of his blade there under closer inspection. It was a Templar technique designed primarily to incapacitate a mage before they could cast, but which could also serve to disable an enemy's sword arm in a pinch. A piece of himself - what he had once been - written there on her flesh. He glanced up into her eyes to see what she thought of this. Trevelyan's gaze revealed nothing. He resumed his exploration.

Samson placed his hand over a constellation of small, puckered circular scars, both old and new, that dotted her chest irregularly above her left breast. His thumb stroked across one particular roundel closer to the center than the others. The deadly kiss of an arrow directly over her heart.

"This," he told her, vaguely impressed, "should have killed you."

"I wasn't ready to die," she replied simply as if it were nothing, though Samson could hear the dryness in her throat and sense the faint darkness of the memory behind her calm exterior. Her heart sped beneath his hand. He allowed that hand to slide down to cover her breast, directing her attention back outward. The flush had spread up into her cheeks by the time she looked into his face once again and he laced the fingers of his free hand into her hair as he stepped into her.

"That scar won't be the only mark I send you to the Void with before it's done," he growled to her as he bent, pressing his lips against the throbbing pulse at her neck.

He did not have to goad her tonight. Her body responded to him as if a day had not passed since the last time he had touched her. Her skin warmed and reddened under his hands. Her breath gasped near his ear as he drank in the sharp scent of her against her neck - her hands found his shoulders but not to push him away. An animal yowl erupted from Trevelyan's throat as he bit her hard at the shoulder. Her fingertips dug into his back through his tunic like the claws of a cat, the individual points of pain melding together into a white-hot stab of pleasure as Samson laughed. He pressed her against the cold stone of the wall and covered her mouth with his own She bit his lip with a vengeful snarl, drawing blood, but it only stoked the column of fire that was building in his belly higher and hotter.

She was dripping wet already before his fingers ever found her mound. The urgency of his own need - delayed since their encounter the night before - would not be denied any longer. Samson tore at the laces of his breeches, his cock raging and painfully hard in his hand as he freed it. Trevelyan's legs instinctively wrapped around him as he lifted her and with one fluid, brutal push he was inside of her.

Ever after, Samson could not remember how long the act of lust had taken. His thinking mind had dissolved utterly under the roaring tyranny of his body. He remembered her being hot within, a forge of unquenchable fury that heated and melded him into itself. He remembered his heart hammering against hers and the sound of their voices together on the stale air like the scream of forest predators in the night. He remembered grasping her hair and holding her before him so that he could see once again the way that her eyes rolled back and closed and the shape that her mouth made as the smallest of all deaths overtook her before he thundered into that Void himself.

When it was done, when he stood sweaty and pressed against her, still lodged within her body as her ribs and breasts heaved against his chest, Samson turned his face to Trevelyan's cheek. The taste of her sweat and his own blood was on his lips, but there was no better taste to him. He was not her lover to murmur softly into her ear or nuzzle into her neck in post-coital affection. But he held her there, breathing, feeling her breathe, until her soft inhales smoothed and he felt the sweat begin to cool on his body.

Trevelyan turned from him as they parted. Her hair was damp, her face still blushed with the effort of their coupling. There was a bloody bite mark on her shoulder and Samson watched her inspect it gingerly before she began to pull down her tunic. She winced as she bent to retrieve the rest of her clothes - evidently sore inside from the violence of his attention. Something was different in the way she held herself. It was not until she turned slightly and he got a good look at her face that Samson realized what it was. She was afraid. Not of him, but something else. Something inside of herself.

As she dressed, Samson resituated his own clothes. He prepared the philters - the red for himself, the pure dust for her. By the time he was done, Trevelyan was clothed again. Her brow was knit, her expression serious, almost dazed. He handed her the vial of blue-white relief. She accepted it wordlessly, staring at it in her hand and turning it in her fingers as if she wanted simultaneously to drink it and dash it to the floor. A sentiment that was damnably, bitterly all too familiar to Samson.

He downed his own philter quickly, letting the bitterness pass his throat with barely a taste. He watched Trevelyan drink hers, closing her eyes as the feeling swept through her. In the haze that the dust always brought over him, Samson stepped towards her. He lay his hands on either side of her face. She did not open her eyes, nor did she flinch him away. He leaned his lips against her forehead. Not a kiss, merely a moment shared. And then it passed.

"You asked if I thought that the world would be better under Corypheus," he said to her, when he stepped away. "Now you understand why it never mattered. Why there was never even a choice at all."

He snuffed the candles and left her there in the dark. His cot felt cold after the warmth of Trevelyan's skin. The lyrium and the sex had satisfied the complaints of Samson's body, but his mind was less eased. He remembered the scar on her side - the one that he had given her. He remembered the way that her arms had wrapped tightly around him in the moment of her release. He remembered with sudden clarity Trevelyan's expression as he had held her against the wall, their faces almost but not quite touching though their bodies were still joined together. And, deep in his gut, Samson understood why she had been afraid.

~~0~~

"Do you love him?" Samson asked her, curiously, two nights later as he watched Trevelyan undress before him. He no longer needed to remind her of their bargain. She seemed to accept it now as a matter of course. With the remaining days of her life ticking swiftly down, perhaps the distraction was as welcome as the lyrium. Her eyes flicked to his, annoyed by the question.

"Does it make a difference?"

"No," he told her, callously, grinning at her as he touched her, cupping a breast, toying with a nipple. The bite mark on her shoulder had darkened to a deep, angry purple, along with the red lines of scratches and the flecks of dark fingerprints that he had left on her since. "I'm just curious."

Trevelyan eyed him, but her expression settled again as he swept his hand up across her skin, curling around her neck. He could feel the slight cold chill that swept up her spine when he touched her that way - her body admitting that she liked it even if she would not.

"I care for Cullen," she told him evenly. "I want his happiness. I enjoy his company. He's a good man."

"That wasn't what I asked," he reminded her, working his fingers into her hair and pulling her close enough for him to kiss her jaw and the line of her throat.

He felt Trevelyan's hands, heavy with the cold metal of their chains slide up his bare arms and shoulders. This was new. He had stripped off his own shirt, wanting to feel the heat of her skin against his own flesh. He had not expected her to begin to explore him as boldly as he did her.

"He loves me," she replied, as Samson fingers trailed along the central valley of her belly, traversing the curls over her sex as he cupped her between the legs. "That was enough."

Her nails bit hard into his flesh when at last he took her against the wall, raking bloody scratches into his back as he thrust into her. His own hands gripped her ass and thighs with such force that he knew she would be marked like a spotted horse before he was done with her. The urgency of his long-ignored need had been sated on the first night, and so he turned his attention instead to riding the feeling of her - forcing her to crest again and again until her moans joined together into sustained, furious vowels of desire.

Afterwards, he shared the rush of the lyrium with her, still mostly naked, his hands on her shoulders and her neck as he watched her come back from the ecstasy of the dust. Trevelyan's eyes opened, clear blue like thick ice or the lyrium in her philter, looking back into his own. There was the vulnerability that he had craved. He smiled at her.

"It's going to be a shame to have to kill you," he growled to her, teasing her.

"Not if I kill you first," she replied.


	3. Tangled

The Elder One was coming.

Of all of the deadly boons that the red lyrium had given Samson - the strength, the power, the desensitization to pain - this was the strangest effect. When it was quiet, when the wind was still and the noise of men and armor and voices had abated, he could sometimes hear echoes - snatches of a music so beautiful and grotesque in its wrongness that it made him ache inside. And it became stronger whenever Corypheus drew near.

Trevelyan knew it, too, whether by observing him or through some intrinsic instinct for danger. She was as irascible as ever, but increasingly restless as the days counted down. She slowly and relentlessly paced the length of the wall that her bonds would allow her to reach, back and forth, as if deliberating with herself. Samson could hear the rattle of her chains when he approached the chamber. She would sit quietly - apparently in meditation - while he was working, her eyes closed and her posture as rigid as a statue. When his work was finished, however, when he was with her and in her in the late hours of the night, she devoured him with her mouth and her hands and her warm cunt as if his skin were made of lyrium.

"I'm surprised you haven't tried to escape," he had told her on a night where she had knelt before him, working at the laces of his breeches as he gathered the bloody veil of her hair in his fist so that he could watch.

His cock had needed no further encouragement when it was free of his cod. Her warm breath on the engorged member was aphrodisiac enough. She had kissed him there and sent shivers of fire up through his belly and back.

"Haven't I?" she had asked, pausing in her ministrations to look up at him.

There was color in her cheeks again as her body began to recover from the worst of its deprivations - the last late autumn bloom before the deadly frost, Samson thought. The hands that spread warm across his abdomen were braceleted with red - chafed, broken skin showing underneath her manacles. He had not noticed the cuts and nicks on her fingers and hands before, or he had simply dismissed them as artifacts of battle or passion like her other small marks. But, it was the faint distance in her eyes as she had gazed up the length of his body into his face - a dragon goddess on her knees - that had made him understand her meaning before he had guided her mouth back to his cock.

She had tried. And this had become her escape.

Trevelyan sat against the wall, lost in thought, when Samson laid a plate of food down in front of her. The archers had been fortunate. The ram had been old and tough, but fresh meat was a better meal than dull dry rations and anything tasted fine if you stewed it well enough. She stared at the plate for a long moment. She was too intelligent not to know what it meant.

"I know you said you'd die before breaking bread with me," Samson told her, filling the poignant silence, "but it's hard to share a meal with a corpse. Make an exception?"

She nodded and picked up the plate as he settled down on the stones in front of her with his own. He had spent a fortnight looking down at her. Tonight, for a little while at least, he wanted to look at her face to face.

"Tomorrow, then?" Trevelyan asked as she picked at the food. The question was delivered with her typical cool composure, as if she were merely inquiring about the weather, though her voice sounded tired to his ears. Samson shrugged.

"Tomorrow. Or the next day. He's close."

The corner of her lip twitched up briefly as she attempted to add some levity to the conversation.

"Will it be quick, do you suppose? I expect to sit through the obligatory insufferable gloating, but his last attempt to kill me did drag on a bit."

"No," Samson replied, trying to match her tone and finding that his voice felt heavy and leaden in his throat. "You've cost him too much. He'll make an example."

"Well, perhaps he'll delegate the honor to you as a reward. No doubt you'll enjoy that."

Samson glanced up from his plate to catch her gaze and determine if the needle jab of the comment was meant to hurt or if it was simply her way of playing with him as she sometimes did. Trevelyan's lips formed a smile that the rest of her face did not share. Samson saw how her eyes searched his face, as if reading him like the page of a book.

"That would be poetic, would it not?" she continued, her cultured voice turning up at the end, seeking an answer to a different unspoken question.

"I never liked poetry," he grunted in reply, letting his gaze shift back down to his plate so that he would not have to look at her when the image of her death - her imperious face slack, bloody-mouthed, with eyes that reflected only the Void - flashed through his mind.

When the meal was complete, Samson fished out a bottle of something strong and Antivan that he had looted from some villa or other during his travels. Drink had never been his particular poison, but he had found its numbing qualities useful at times. And he wanted to be numb now. Trevelyan accepted a cup, sipping it, rolling the burn of the alcohol through her mouth as if pleased with its sour sharpness. She always enjoyed a good bite, Samson thought, remembering her exultant growls when she felt his teeth on her flesh.

"Afraid?" he asked her, the brandy softening the macabre nature of the conversation.

"Of death?" she asked, chuckling as if he had told a joke. Samson was instantly reminded of the small arrow scar over her heart. "No. It will hurt and then it will no longer hurt and that will be the end of it. If I was afraid of pain or dying, I would never have picked up a sword to begin with."

"I forgot. Her Worship - the high holy Inquisitor - fears nothing but the Maker Himself," he teased her, engaging her in a game that he knew she excelled at. Trevelyan's teeth flashed, but with rare good humor this time.

"Not even the Maker," she corrected him, her tone both haughty and humorously blasphemous.

"Regrets, then. Everyone has those," he pressed.

Even after this long, he knew so little of the woman in front of him. His fingers could navigate her body now like the twisting alleyways and dark dens of Kirkwall's Lowtown, but Samson didn't truly know her. Here at the end, he wanted something of her - a piece of the puzzle that made Trevelyan who she was, given freely.

"You are expecting me to say that my only regret is that I was not able to kill you first," she replied, half of her smile falling as she slowly turned her cup in her hand. Trevelyan drew in a slow breath, considering his question

"I was no one before I became the Inquisitor," she began. At his scoff, she raised an eyebrow, pausing, before she continued. "I was the youngest child of a large and prestigious family - chattel born to serve the interests of my parents and elder siblings. If not for the Conclave, I would have been forced into the Chantry eventually as a Sister or, perhaps, a Templar if I was very lucky. Instead, I became the Inquisitor, the Herald of Andraste. Instead of serving them as I was brought up to expect, it was my family that served me as allies of the Inquisition. I have looked into the face of an Empress - and also the Emperor that I replaced her with - and I saw them flinch under my gaze. Whether the Inquisition succeeds or fails in stopping Corypheus, whether the world grinds down to oblivion or not when I'm gone, that world was mine for a short time. I have very little to regret. Except . . ."

She raised her glass in salute, inclining her head in a solemn, genteel gesture.

" . . . that I was not afforded the pleasure of killing you first."

Samson smiled. Despite her sardonic wit, this was meant as a compliment. The acknowledgement of a worthy adversary. He leaned in and refilled her cup.

"What about Rutherford?" he probed, feeling the pleasant buzz of the liquor beginning to hum in the back of his head. "No regrets there?"

"Ah," she said, almost a sigh. Her expression went wistful for an instant, as she sipped the brandy. "Only that I've disappointed him. I've given him one more pain to replace what I tried to take away." Trevelyan closed her eyes for a moment, frowning. "One small request. The future will be difficult enough for him. He doesn't need to know about this."

Samson had half expected her to ask for Rutherford's life to be spared - but she already knew how trite and impossible and eventually cruel that request would be. He would have liked to have seen the look on his former friend's face when the man found out that Samson - Samson, of all people - had bedded his woman. But it was, as she said, a small thing. He nodded.

"Done."

She smiled briefly at him, thanking him without words. A fraction of her formal bearing eased and Trevelyan leaned back against the wall. The rise of her breasts was more prominent in this position. He could easily imagine her leaning against a bed frame in a house somewhere and regarding him this way - as his woman, not just for the few days that he had held her prisoner. A reality that never would be and never would have been, but it sent a brief flash of hot desire through his body. That would keep. This would likely be his last opportunity to enjoy her this way and he wanted to remember it and make the most of it. He kept his gaze on her eyes.

"What do you regret, Samson?" she asked, using his name for the first time that he could remember. She had never called it out once, not in battle nor in the throes of carnal passion. Her voice was smoothed, relaxed in the way that he only ever heard it after the lust and the lyrium were both satisfied. It was not part of her game. She wanted to know.

Was there anything in his life that he did not regret? That was a better question. The lyrium? There were days when he cursed the first hour that he had ever tasted the stuff. He should have had the courage to throw himself from the highest cliff on the Wounded Coast long before he had allowed it to turn him into what he had become. But it had meant something more than mere relief once. It had been an oath. One that he had been proud of. The letter? How many times had he gone over his mistakes in his head? If he had been smarter, if he had been less careless, less certain that he would not be caught, Maddox would not be Tranquil and he would never have been drummed out of the Order to rot on the streets until his entire being was consumed with the hunger for lyrium. But Meredith would have found a reason in the end. She always had. The mad, heartless bitch.

He remembered Trevelyan's accusation when he had first confronted her about the lyrium and how it had stung him like the lash of a leaded bullwhip. I took the risk only upon myself. You poisoned every soldier under your command.

"The Templars," Samson admitted, realizing with crushing certainty that this was absolutely correct. "I wish that it could have been another way - that I could take the red out of them. If I could stop it now, I would. But what's done is done. I'll pay the same penalty as the others in time."

He did not care if she believed him. It was true whether she believed it or not. But he could tell from the way her chin tilted, from the way her expression did not shift back to her hardened public face, that Trevelyan did. He could not decide if that was a relief or if it was merely one more thing to regret.

She undressed, her face flushed from the brandy, as he prepared their philters. He undressed himself before he approached her, the first time that he had been fully naked with her. Samson had always given Trevelyan the dust afterwards - that was their bargain, her body for the lyrium - but tonight he took her hand and pressed the vial into it at the beginning.

"Take it now," he told her.

She could try to cheat him out of her body if she wished - take the lyrium and turn him away. But, tonight, Samson wanted her to feel something else. On the rare occasions where he had been able to afford a hit of dwarf dust and a whore at the same time, it was the closest that he could come to shutting out all of the raging needs and hates and lusts that were the bedrock and cornerstone of his existence - a moment where he could escape from the cage of his body and remember who he had been before the fall. He wanted to give Trevelyan that. And he wanted that with her for himself.

Samson brushed her hair out of her face, caressing her neck and shoulders as she drank. The gooseflesh rose on her skin under his fingertips, her eyes closed, her mouth opened slightly as she gave in to the rush. He quaffed the glowing red poison in his own philter, heard it roll as it dropped empty from his fingers, and then he kissed her. She tasted of sour-sweet brandy and bitter lyrium and, as the ecstasy of the dust swelled up within him, everything that had gone before her or that would happen after her ceased to matter

Samson consumed her. He kissed her shoulders and her chest and her breasts. He kissed the bruises and the bites and the scar over her heart that had not killed her. Trevelyan's hands roamed him, her arms wrapped around him like the pulse and burn of his lyrium armor. Her touch left no scratches this time. His kisses left no bruises. He heard his name whispered out somewhere above his ear and it was a more exquisite pain than any he had ever experienced.

"Say it again," he told her as he went to his knees before her. Her belly was taut and firm, but it rippled with her breath as he kissed the smooth skin beneath her navel, nuzzled his nose along the soft crosshatch of red hair, and tasted her again. Sweet honey.

"Samson," she moaned. Her hands found his neck, her fingers raked into his dark hair as he growled against her, praying at her altar with his lips and his tongue and his palms on her thighs, belly, and cunt - a supplicant with many sins to confess and only one petition.

"Again."

Her bonds were cold on his bare flesh. They looped around his neck and tightened before he fully comprehended what was happening in the furious haze of his need. In the candlelight of the chamber, Samson looked up from his knees into the eyes of his lover, her hands tightly gripping the lengths of steel chain that would choke him to death before he could gain enough leverage to stop her, and for an instant - through the mist of her own intoxication - he saw the flash and fire of the dragon looking back.

I'm surprised that you haven't tried to escape , he had told her.

Haven't I? she had replied.

Another stupid mistake. Another failure. Almost - what was the word she had used? - poetic. Samson felt his body relax, accepting it. She had beaten him in the end. Of all the ways that he could die, this would be the cleanest. The one that he would regret the least. He breathed out, leaned his sweat-beaded forehead against the flesh of her stomach, and waited for the chains to constrict.

"Samson," Trevelyan whispered - the first and only gentle word that he had ever heard uttered from her lips.

Her hands were on his cheeks, caressing the rough stubble of his jaw. She helped him stand. They were tangled together in her chains, her arms around his neck, his around her waist for stability. When he looked again into her eyes, the dragon was gone. The Inquisitor was gone. They had left only an anguished blue-eyed woman behind.

She pressed her face against his chest for a moment, breathing out against the rhythm of his heart, and then she drew him back to the wall with her.

He held her there long after their bodies were spent. She held him also, her arms around him, her body stretched along the length of his own so that every curve and valley fit against a corresponding curve or valley like puzzle pieces. They did not speak. There was nothing left to say.

When he left her at last, Samson sat down on his cot, sweaty and still smelling of her, and he stared hard into the darkness of the room for awhile. Setting his mind to what would have to be done the next day.

~~0~~

"Wake up."

Trevelyan normally roused instantly, but it had been only two or three hours since Samson had left her to sleep and she had been exhausted. He shook her shoulder roughly, seeing the bleariness and confusion in her eyes as they opened.

"Come on, girl. Get up," he snapped at her, impatiently, grabbing her arm and beginning to haul her to her feet.

She complied, regaining her senses. Trevelyan's gaze lingered on his face inquiringly for a moment before he turned her away from him and pulled her arms behind her, exchanging the manacles that chained her to the wall for a different set. By the time Samson was finished, whatever softness there had been in that gaze was gone - covered once more by the indifferent carapace of the Inquisitor.

She did not resist as he pushed her ahead of him through the chamber door. It was two hours before dawn. The grounds of the Shrine were quiet, save for the sound of sentries about their patrols. Samson did not take her through the courtyard. He marched her quickly through a side corridor, turned, and then turned again, descending a flight of stone steps.

"Where-" Trevelyan began, but he cut her off sharply before she could complete the question.

"Shut up."

They emerged into the moonlight in a small overgrown yard near the cisterns - it had likely once been a kitchen garden to serve the priests who tended the shrine - and Samson stopped, pulling Trevelyan back into the shadows as he listened carefully, waiting.

He knew the sentry patrols like the back of his hand. He had assigned them and rigorously enforced them. Samson waited there, almost breathlessly, feeling Trevelyan's shoulder warm under his hand until he heard the armored clank of one of the Red Templars approach and then fall away again. A few moments more to be sure, and then he pushed her roughly forward again out of the garden towards the trees.

The woods that surrounded the Shrine were a tangle of vines and briars, but he had walked this way before. He knew the way. The scent of loamy earth and damp leaves and the susurrus of insects surrounded them. Samson followed a narrow game trail down into a creek hollow, his eyes scouting for landmarks in the dark. When he finally reached the bank of the narrow stream he pulled his charge up short.

"Cross the hollow and head up the hill," he instructed Trevelyan in a gruff, urgent tone. He turned her roughly and unlocked her bonds. "When you crest the hill, walk due south. Don't stop. Don't piss about. There are Inquisition scouts camped in the river valley fifteen miles in that direction. If you hurry, you can find them."

Before she could respond, Samson spun her around and kissed her fiercely, his fingers grasping into her hair, his tongue invading her mouth as her surprise turned to reciprocation. He crushed her against his body. He did not want to stop. But if he paused for even a moment, the part of himself that knew this was insanity - suicidal, even, in that it she would almost certainly be the death of him one day - would win out.

"You're mine," he growled, brusquely, baring his teeth furiously against her cheek as he broke off the kiss just as abruptly. "I had you before he did. You'll always be mine first."

And then Samson shoved her away from him, backing in the direction of the Shrine. Trevelyan stared at him in the shadows beneath the trees, frozen to the spot as if stunned, and he felt his exasperated anger flare.

"Go!" he snarled at her.

She needed no second bidding. He watched as she turned like a cat and sprinted off through the trees, leaping the narrow creek and disappearing into the underbrush.

He did not linger. He did not want to stand and listen to her fade away into the night. Samson turned on his heel and stalked back towards the Shrine.

He would have to find a convincing lie, but it hardly mattered. The Elder One would kill him for his incompetence or he would not - but Samson didn't think so. Trevelyan had been too thorough in bringing all of the magister's other plans to ruin. Even allowing the Inquisitor to slip through his fingers, Samson knew that he was Corypheus' final and best weapon. Too valuable to sacrifice on a whim.

He would see her again. Trevelyan and her people always turned up to thwart him - the thorn in his side as much as she had become the bait to his loins. The next time he saw her, she would kill him or die trying. She would not spare him again, nor would he spare her. As he climbed the stone steps back up into the main sanctuary of the shrine and returned to his quarters, Samson hoped grimly that it would, at least, be soon.

His chamber was now too empty and cold without her.


	4. Unbound

Waking up in a prison cell had been a bitter experience.

After losing the Shrine, after the hard-fought campaign in the Arbor Wilds, after watching Trevelyan destroy his lyrium armor with but a gesture and leave him weakened and outraged, Samson had comforted himself in his last moments with the thought that it would at least be over. The whole sodding nightmare drama of his life finally ended in the flash of Trevelyan's sword and a gout of lyrium-tainted blood. But, then the darkness had passed and his eyes had opened once again to stone walls, iron bars, and the burning, gnawing ache of lyrium withdrawal. And he had known that, far from the end, it was only the beginning of what was to come.

Rutherford had been his first visitor. His former barracks-mate and Knight-Commander had appeared not long after Samson had woken, striding through the door the instant the guard unlocked it and driving a gauntleted fist into Samson's face so hard that the blow momentarily sent him back into darkness.

"Nice to see you again, too," Samson had growled, spitting blood onto the straw as the commander snatched the front of his tunic and stood over him.

"What did you do to her?" Rutherford had seethed. There was a fury in the man's face that Samson could not remember ever having seen the like of back in Kirkwall.

He didn't have to ask who "her" was. His thoughts went back to Trevelyan chained to the wall of his chamber, covered in bruises that he had given her and still defiant. Trevelyan, her body beneath his fingers, her growls of pleasure against his shoulder and cheek. Trevelyan in his arms on that last night, whispering his name to him over and over as they filled each other's emptiness for the last time.

What did I do to her? Samson had chuckled, hollowly.

"Nothing that matters now."

"I gave you back your place in the Order. I believed in you when no one else did. This is what you did with your second chance?" Rutherford had shouted at him in disgusted anguish, gripping him harder, shaking him. "What you've done to those men - what you've done to her - is worse than murder. So help me, Samson, if she dies, I will personally tear you apart piece by-"

"Cullen," a calmer, more authoritative voice had interrupted from the corridor.

Samson had glanced past the looming figure of his erstwhile friend to see Trevelyan standing outside of the cell. He could not see her face, but he did not have to. He knew her voice as well as he knew his own.

The former Knight-Commander had paused, grimacing with unspent wrath, and then turned back just as quickly as he had come. Samson had pulled himself up onto his elbows, watching as Trevelyan inserted herself between him and her commander, speaking quietly and laying a hand briefly on the man's shoulder, before Rutherford nodded tightly and stalked away. It was only when she had turned to follow, casting a glance into Samson's cell, that he understood with true spine-chilling horror what had prompted Rutherford's rage.

Trevelyan's eyes - once as blue as pure lyrium - were now a bloody red, putting even her fiery hair to shame. They glowed faintly with the oily crimson light that Samson had grown so familiar with among his Red Templars. A sanguine vein snaked across one side of her face, branching vine-like across the skin of her cheek and jaw. She had regarded him wordlessly for a long moment as Samson felt the blood drain from his face, and then she had swept off after her general.

"It was that last night, wasn't it?" he asked her some time later, the bitter gall of the words filling his mouth like bile.

The gaol was quiet between guard patrols and Trevelyan had come alone. Samson sat on the low stone bench of his cell, looking up at her now as she had once looked up at him. She stood beyond the bars of his cell, the same beautiful, fearsome, imposing dragon woman that he remembered - but unreachable to him now. Tainted by his touch, like everything else.

How had it happened? For days, Samson had poured over every moment of their time together. He had never given her the red. He had always prepared the pure lyrium for her. She would never have taken the red from him, knowing what it did. But, little by little, a dozen small lapses that could have contaminated her had revealed themselves. He had used the same tools for both. His body was saturated with the stuff, though his resistance kept the worst of its effects from him. Even a minute amount of the red lyrium would have been enough to corrupt the rest of the lyrium in her body if swallowed. There had been one event above all others that seemed most likely and Samson had roared with self-loathing when the realization hit him alone in his cell, punching his fist into the hard stone of the wall.

"It was in my mouth when I kissed you. Maybe it was in my seed all along."

"There's no way to know for certain," Trevelyan had told him, levelly. "And it no longer matters."

"It does," he had snarled at her, rising. She had not budged backwards even an inch as he gripped the bars of his cell forcefully, cursing. "I should have snapped your neck myself before sending you back to die like this. It would have been kinder. Your fucking commander was right. I've as good as murdered you, you daft girl, and you stand there and tell me that it doesn't matter?"

His skin had felt enflamed, his eyes had stung as he glared into her face. He wanted to see her as angry with him as Rutherford had been. He wanted to feel the hate that he so richly deserved so that it could finally, finally be done with. Instead, Samson felt the heat of her hand - fevered by the lyrium - press against his cheek, dragging from him the first tears that he had shed in too many years to remember.

"It does not matter," Trevelyan had reasserted, authoritatively.

She had leaned her forehead against his through the bars and almost reflexively Samson reached through to grasp her cheek and hair, drawing a ragged breath as he pressed back against her. Before her, he had almost forgotten what it was like to be touched, not for coin but simply for desire. And he had not realized until after she was gone just how much he would ache for that again.

"This is justice," she had insisted, her voice softening. "An elegant response to the hubris of my ambition. Almost, some would say, divine. You were only the arrow, not the archer. The Maker does love his little jokes."

"You're still dead."

"Not yet," she had replied.

The next time that he had seen her had been when they hauled him up from the dungeon and brought him before her seat of judgement. The great hall of Skyhold had been packed with bodies and voices, nobles and soldiers and servants alike straining for a look at one of the monsters that they had been fighting all this time. Trevelyan had been seated on her bladed throne, her burnished scale armor shining in the light that glowed forth from the stained glass windows behind her, her auburn hair flaming around her face like the fiery corona of Andraste herself. His dragon, unchained. Beauty and terror in equal measure, made even more terrible still by the red in her eyes and on her face. An Inquisitor worthy of the stories that were told of her in every corner of Thedas.

Samson had faced her there and he had uttered his last defiant words, giving her whatever he thought she needed to hear to condemn him. He had already destroyed everything that mattered. Death would be welcome, and it would be better than he deserved.

Instead, cruel bitch that she was, Trevelyan had offered him the only mercy that she knew he could not refuse: the chance to aid the Inquisition and help his men by finding a cure for the corruption. And for his Templars, for her - because Samson knew that the sound of his name whispered from her lips would haunt him long after the lyrium had burned away everything else in his miserable being - he had accepted it.

Rutherford would not make that process easy or painless. The mages and that damned dwarven arcanist came to his cell daily. They asked him reams of question. They poked and prodded, took samples of his blood and his flesh. They brought him potions and powders and he downed them all without complaint, no matter how foul they tasted or how much they sickened him. They scribbled their notes. They pulled his armor to pieces. Before it was over, Samson knew that they would likely pull him to pieces, too, but what did it matter? He bore it in silence. He did not snap at them when they pressed him too far for answers, nor did he break their necks when they hurt him. If it would undo even a modicum of the damage he had inflicted, Samson would have gladly let them drain every ounce of tainted blood left in his body.

Weeks passed. It was impossible to tell time in the gaol without daylight and the hours and days began to blend together into one long, torturous present. The void that had once been filled by the lyrium gnawed and widened and hollowed Samson inside until he began to wonder if there was anything left of him but the lyrium at all.

Finally, laying on the cold stone bench after a particularly grueling round of trials, his body burning with fever from the latest poison they had fed him, Samson heard a voice that he had never thought to hear again.

"Corypheus is dead," Trevelyan told him. "I thought that you would want to know."

He opened his eyes, at first unable to believe that it was truly her and not some cruel hallucination of his lyrium-starved mind. But, there she stood at the bars of his cell in the flesh. He sat up, wincing.

The corruption had spread, the veins in her face were somewhat more visible than they had been, but the progress seemed slow. Samson had seen too many of his Templars turn from men to man-shaped monsters not to know the stages. There were no visible crystals protruding from her flesh yet. Her face had not yet taken on the semi-translucent, raw redness of the advanced sickness. That was a good sign. As far as he knew, his resistance was unique and his Templars had been trained for years in the discipline necessary to resist the call of lyrium. Trevelyan had not had the benefit of that training, and he had worried that the corruption would take her more swiftly for it.

"You killed him? You're sure?" he asked her, frowning. This was a worry that had occurred to him well after his capture. If anyone could kill the bastard it would be Trevelyan, but Samson had not been entirely certain that Corypheus could be killed at all. When she nodded, he scowled, bitterly. "Good."

"His Venatori have largely fled back to Tevinter. There are still a number of your Templars to be dealt with, but that will take time. Your men were well placed and instructed. It could be years before we've routed out the last of them," she told him. He saw her lips press firmly together for a moment before continuing. "I've had orders dispatched to all of our field commanders that any Templars who surrender or who are captured are to be treated as humanely as possible."

Months ago, Samson would have said that it would be a cold day in the Hissing Wastes before the famously ruthless Inquisitor would have shown any mercy whatsoever to her enemies. But, though she had never served the Order herself, Trevelyan was a Templar in her own way - and no doubt she understood better than anyone else in Skyhold except himself the horror of what his men were facing. If anyone would see to it that they were treated fairly, she would.

"Thank you," he told her sincerely, both humbled and relieved.

He watched as she fished a key from her belt and opened his cell, closing the door behind her as she stepped inside. She moved very differently in her own fortress, he noted. There was a self-assured grace and elegance to her step that he had not seen in her when their positions were reversed. In her tastefully cut surcoat and breeches, with her hair neatly bound up into a knot at the back of her head, she looked every inch the noblewoman that she was. That she had once stood naked before Samson - lowborn Lowtown trash that he was - and allowed him to take pleasure in her body and pleasure her in return seemed something too improbable to be true.

"They tell me," she continued in a quieter tone, "that there is unlikely to be a cure anytime soon. The corruption is progressing slowly for me, but any future cure will come far too late."

"Then it's all been for nothing," Samson growled, frustration and defeat welling up within him. Even when his body and blood were all that he had left to give, it was not enough.

"There may be another way."

He listened as she described what she had learned about the nature of the red lyrium. It was Blighted, just as the darkspawn were. And the only known cure for darkspawn taint was to become a Grey Warden.

"I won't allow this to continue to the inevitable conclusion," Trevelyan stated as dispassionately as if she were discussing troop movements and battle plans instead of her own death. "I've made the necessary arrangements. A recruiter was already on his way to collect another member of the Inquisition. If I die in the Joining, it will be a merciful death by comparison. If I survive and am not cured, then the Inquisition will know to look elsewhere and I will go to the Deep Roads to die with the dignity of a Warden instead of waiting until my mind and body break. And, if I survive and the corruption is stayed, then I will renounce my titles and serve like any other. Fitting, I think. My time here was already coming to a close. This is an honorable way to step down."

"The noble Inquisitor fighting in the dirt and sand alongside murderers and thieves?" Samson asked her, teasing her without mirth. His heart sank, realizing that he would lose her all over again, this time to the Wardens, but she was unbound now - no longer his to keep.

Her smile quirked at that, just the edge of her characteristic haughty irreverence resurfacing.

"The Grey Wardens conscript kings as well as thieves."

She approached him, her fingers sliding onto his neck, her lips leaning against his brow. Samson allowed his arms to encircle her waist. He did not deserve this. But he reached for it anyway.

"I will be leaving for Weisshaupt in a matter of days. Cullen will take my place and I've extracted an oath from him that you will be treated well. There will be no more tests after today. They have all they need to continue without causing you further pain," she told him. "But, I've also come to tell you that the offer of recruitment is extended to you, too, if you wish it."

Samson chuckled dryly, pulling back from her enough to look up into her face to see if she was serious.

"Me? What would the Wardens want with a burned out failure of a Templar?"

"In the words of their recruiter, you wouldn't be their first," she quipped, wryly. She caressed his neck, looking down at him as her brow knitted. Her expression grew pained, vulnerable once again. "It's your choice, Samson. If you stay here, they'll keep you safe. If you want them to, they'll end your suffering when it becomes too painful to bear any longer. I hate the thought of you dying in a cage, but it's your decision to make. If you come to Weisshaupt, then you will likely still die. I'm told that a Warden's life is usually hard and short. But, for whatever time you have left, you'll be free. And you will have me."

For an instant, all he could do was look at her. Her red eyes - once crystal blue - remained fixed on his, no longer the worshipful Inquisitor with her many masks but once again the girl who had decided to die rather than kill him when she had the chance. The girl that he had been willing to die to save in return. His girl. He stood, pulling her into his arms and laying his cheek against the crown of her head, feeling her body conform to his just as he remembered it. She returned the embrace warmly, leaning against his shoulder as she had on their last night together.

"And Rutherford?" he asked her. Seeing her touch the former Knight-Commander had sparked something visceral in him, but he had made her a promise and he had kept his peace. Still, he needed to know.

"Will be better off if he's nowhere near me. There was no way to know how the corruption was spread. I would never endanger him that way. His life is more valuable to me than my own," she responded, adding wistfully, "You were right. I broke his heart in the end. He believes that I left him only for fear of spreading the corruption to him, but the fact of the matter is that I was never truly his. He was mine, but I was yours. You were right about that as well."

"Daft girl," Samson growled at her, but he was smiling despite himself. He sighed into her hair and drew back, his hands on her shoulders. Trevelyan looked up at him expectantly. "I guess Warden isn't such a far cry from Templar. Not like I'm good for much else as it is. Send your recruiter. I'll talk to him."

Her lips tipped up and she kissed him. Three days later, he was standing in the courtyard of Skyhold before a crowd that had gathered to watch their Inquisitor depart. The sky overhead was bright blue, the air clear, the Breach a distant green seam over the peaks. His body still ached for the want of lyrium, but Samson would bear up as best he could. He knew now that Trevelyan, mounting her horse next to him, was suffering in the same way. Any philter she took now would only hasten her corruption, and she had chosen to give it up besides. She would never allow herself to be weak in that way again.

Rutherford watched from the overlook in front of the keep. The former Templar's face was a somber mask. He had spoken for a long time to Trevelyan and she had kissed him briefly on the cheek before turning away. Samson didn't begrudge the man his final goodbye or envy his grief. Few could ever hope to fill the shoes of the Inquisitor and Trevelyan was a hard woman to lose. He knew that from experience. Still, when she turned in her saddle to cast her smile over Samson, he could not help but feel a surge of fierce pride. She was his. First, and last. And whatever happened with the Joining, that was more than enough.

"Will you miss Skyhold, my lady?" asked the third recruit in their party, a grave, bearded soldier that had been introduced to Samson as Thom Rainier. Trevelyan regarded him with a level expression that told Samson there was a history between them - a largely unpleasant one - but his question was civil and her response was gracious.

"There are no nobles or titles among the Grey Wardens, Rainier. We are now equals. 'Trevelyan' will suffice. But, yes. I will miss it."

The conversation was interrupted as their Warden recruiter rode his rangy bay horse up before them. He was a rough-looking Marcher with grey in his short dark hair and a thick scar that crossed his brow and down the side of one cheek. His grey and blue armor was well-cleaned and shone in the light of the rising sun, despite its battle scars. He had so far proven to be an amiable sort.

"I know your type already," the recruiter had said, walking into Samson's cell for the first time and grinning, his thick Starkhaven accent good humored. "You're asking yourself two questions right now. The first is: what's this man hope to get out of me? The second is: can I take him? The answers are 'another strong sword arm against the Blight, never mind the killing' and 'not a chance' respectively. Any further questions or are you ready to get out of this hole?"

The man hadn't been wrong. The recruiter had assured him that his past didn't matter. Samson had proven himself an able fighter. If he was willing to serve, that was all that mattered and that was all that would ever be asked of him. Those were terms that Samson decided he could live with.

"Well, recruits," the Warden said, smiling. "Said your goodbyes? Made your peace? Good. Off we go."

It would be weeks yet before they would reach the Anderfels and the Warden stronghold. Whatever happened when they arrived, would happen. Samson would concentrate instead on the road and on the woman who shared his tent.

"I think you miss the chains," he teased her on their first night together, grinning as she straddled him on their bedrolls, her body pressing down warm and solid against his own. He watched her fingers trace the fresh scar on his chest. It was hers - the one she had left him with after the temple of Mythal. His fingers squeezed into the flesh at her hips and thighs in anticipation. "Don't think I'm going to go easy on you, girl. Chains or not, I can still easily pin you down and take what I please."

"Not if I take it from you first," she replied, showing her teeth at the challenge. And then she did. And later, with her curled into the curve of his arm, Samson reflected that being devoured by a dragon was really no bad thing.


End file.
